Connections
by OccasionalAvenger
Summary: Steve Rogers finds a way to connect to the new world in the strangest of places. Beginnings of Romanogers and cool shit with S.H.I.E.L.D . Also Hawkeye, because everyone loves Hawkeye. PLEASE comment!


**DISCLAIMER: ALL CHARACTERS AND ORGANIZATIONS BELONG TO MARVEL COMICS/STUDIOS**

 _I'm sorry that this is terrible. Purely MCU, no comic influences._

It's little things that reconnect Steve with the world. It's so easy to get overwhelmed—and he did, in those early days—that he has to find things that make him feel some semblance of normalcy. Just sitting in the break room at SHIELD every morning swamps him with information: names, brands, movie quotes thrown about so casually in conversation that even his serum-enhanced memory has trouble taking note of them for later.

Sports, of all things, are a strong link to his old life. The Redskins, DC's-apparently abysmal-football team, are topic of conversation around SHIELD nearly every day. Steve decides it's an incremental vacation, the agents' way of distracting themselves from the horrors of their work. He's still working on that.

"Jesus _Christ_ , man, get Shanahan the fuck off my team. Piggy-backed on Elway for a couple 'a Super Bowls…bastard can't coach for shit."

"It's RG, man, I'm telling you. He's not healthy. Came off that damn ACL too early—we can't expect him to be any good."

"Bullshit—s'all on ol' Danny Boy. He's fuckin' toxic. Everything he touches turns into hot garbage...I bet he hates puppies."

Steve listens raptly to the conversation every morning, though football has never been his favorite sport. He remembers the Redskins, though, and it's oddly like finding a familiar face in a crowd. Bucky, a Giants fan, loathed them back in the day. The Redskins weren't much good then either. Apparently they haven't changed in 70 years. It's strangely comforting.

"Used to be baseball," Steve says to Natasha Romanoff one morning. His weekly attempt to make conversation. They're drinking coffee at 4:00 am in the break room and listening to a group of young field agents arguing about if the Redskins will ever win more than four games again. Romanoff gives him a questioning look and he elaborates. "We used to talk about baseball. Not football."

"It's not baseball season," Romanoff says, swishing the coffee around in her mug. She drinks it with cream and two sugars, but there's no reason for him to know that.

"I know. But we talked about it all the time. Played in the schoolyard and everything." Steve wants to take the words back as soon as he says them. He doesn't think he's imagining the vague contempt in Romanoff's face. He's been good about not mentioning his past around her; it suits both of them because it's painful for him and he's pretty sure Romanoff couldn't care less. Especially, Steve thinks, not about America's poor change of taste in sports

She surprises him (that's becoming a routine). "Clint will talk about baseball with you." There's a strain of faint dislike in her tone. Steve is pretty sure it's directed at baseball, not Clint.

"Not a baseball person, then?"

"Not a sports person. It's pointless." Romanoff gets up fluidly and rinses her empty mug in the sink, carefully dumping the dirty water out and placing the mug on the drying rack. She grabs her jacket from off the back of her chair and leaves him without so much as a goodbye.

Pointless? Steve ponders it. How could such a simple, pure source of happiness could be pointless? Some of his best memories are of him and Bucky at Dodgers games when they were kids. But that was a different time. Things were simpler then. Steve certainly hasn't watched baseball—or any sport, for that matter—since he got out of the ice. Perhaps sports has lost its soul like everything else in this damn world.

The rowdy group of twenty-something year-old agents has gone, leaving Steve alone in the break room with an empty coffee mug. He wants to refill it, but a battered paper sign above the pot warns that Agent Morse will find and kill him if he takes more than his share of coffee.

He wishes Romanoff hadn't left.

* * *

"Hey! Cap! Wait up a minute." The voice attached to the words is Clint Barton's, echoing in the cavernous SHIELD parking garage.

Steve turns to see Barton trotting towards him, awkwardly, because the archer dislocated his hip on an assignment yesterday. Steve kills the engine on his motorcycle and nods at the other agent.

"Barton. What's wrong?"

"Aww, call me Clint. And nothing's wrong. But, uh…a couple of us are gonna go out to watch the 'Skins game at a bar this weekend. You in?"

Steve shakes his head, smiling. "I appreciate the offer, Clint. Really. But I can't do that."

Clint doesn't look deterred. "C'mon, buddy. Your schedule can't be that busy. What've the psychs got you doin' now, watching _Ben Hur_?"

"It's not that I'm busy, I just…" Steve's voice trails off. If he's being honest with himself, the thought of leaving his house for something so trivial even as watching a football game is daunting. He's cut himself off from the world over these last few months. The New York incident was…New York was horrifying, and that was on top of waking up 70 years after he was supposed to have died.

He flounders for way to tell Clint he can't bring himself to leave his house that doesn't make him sound like a recluse, and as he does so his gaze lands on a sleek, black sports car parked a few spots over from his bike.

Natasha Romanoff is sitting in the front seat, all red hair and hard edges. She's blatantly watching him, making no attempt to look away when Steve meets her eyes. She raises an eyebrow expectantly. Steve looks back at Clint, making the connection. Romanoff put him up to this.

 _Maybe_ , says a small voice in the back of Steve's mind, _she'll be there_. _Maybe you'll make a friend._ The idea was tantalizing. Not being alone.

He steels himself. "Okay. Where should I meet you? Who's going?"

Clint looks genuinely delighted. "Awesome. I'll text you all that shi—uh, stuff later. I got your number from the files...oh don't look like that."

"Looking forward to it," Steve says, watching his friend (?) jog over to the black sports car and hop into the passenger seat. Romanoff smirks and Clint grins cheekily. Steve gets on his motorcycle and follows them out of the parking lot. It's Wednesday, meaning he has four days until the Redskins game. Small though it may be, Steve realizes, he finally has something look forward to.


End file.
